Fortunately, I’m a slow needle-pointer. Steady, sure. But slow.

The downside of this is that I can spend months (years?) on a project. The upside? This glacial pace allows for some thinking. And overthinking.

I’ve done a lot of pondering during my current project.

This is a 14-inch-by-10-inch canvas showing a shelf of seven books. As soon as I saw it at the Stitch Boutique in Winchester, I knew I had to give it a go. They loaded me up with silk threads (Captain’s Blue, Jet Black, Canyon Sunset etc.).

These are, of course, some of the great books. I wanted to honor them in some way, particularly during this time of book-banning and author-shaming.

Before tackling the spines of the books, I worked on the surrounding area–two shelves (with colors like Bark, Dark Earth and Oak Bluffs) and the black background.

While working on the non-book sections, I found I had plenty of time to think of the books themselves.

Great as these eight specific books are, I felt a little ashamed about including a book I had not read. (I’m talking about you, War and Peace.) I decided I should do books that I have actually read.

Of course, that was a daunting chore. I never kept a list. It so happens that the books I seem to recall most intensely are the ones I read as a teenager, say between the ages of 10 and 18. Of course, that decision eliminated many wonderful books—where to begin? Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks; A Different Drummer by William Melvin Kelly; and, most recently, City of Thieves by David Benioff.

Once I focused on the timeframe (circa 1962-1970), I realized I needed to narrow the list further. In keeping with the needlepoint canvas in hand, I thought I had to focus on fiction.

That meant I had to shelve (ha, ha)  some of my favorite books from those years. Among them:  Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin;  The Other America by Michael Harrington; A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold; Silent Spring by Rachel Carson; The Babe Ruth Story (as told to Bob Considine); and (embarrassingly) Worlds in Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky.

So that leaves me saying, “Alex, I’ll take fiction books I enjoyed as a teen-ager for $200.”

What are the eight novels I most enjoyed as a teenager? That’s a fine question, probably for anyone to ask.

This will not be easy.

First, I have to (needle)point out some serious issues. For example:

• Can I correctly spell “Dostoevsky,” and will it fit on a spine?
• Should I include four books by Tolkien?
• Do I dare let friends and family know how much I furtively enjoyed Lady Chatterley’s Lover?

I will deal with them as I slowly and carefully begin to needlepoint the spines of the books. For the record, I already plunged by tiny needle into the spine of Moby-Dick.

I hope needlepointing M-D won’t take as long as the Pequod’s last sea voyage. That lasted months and months and months and (spoiler alert!) ended rather badly. It will take a few days, though. That will give me plenty of time to think about the other seven Great-to-Me books that I want on this shelf.

I’ll let you know.